Sunday, June 24

It’s now Sunday morning, and I have boarded the train from Bielefeld to Berlin after spending Shabbat in Bielefeld.

It was a great opportunity to experience Shabbat with a smaller, outlying community, and I’m glad that the shidduch was made by Rabbi Ederberg.

My primary hosts were Irith Michelsohn and Yuval Adam.   Irith is (I believe) the President of the Jewish Community of Germany.  Yuval is a professional singer (counter-tenor) who often leads services in Bielefeld and other small Jewish communities around the region.

Irith Michelsohn and Yuval Adam

The congregation is almost entirely made up of Jews who have emigrated from the FSU (Former Soviet Union).

It was a Shabbat of intersecting circles, and I tried to draw those circles for people with the music I chose and the way that I introduced or explained it.

The synagogue is lovely – VERY lively acoustically, having been converted some years ago from being a Protestant church.  Once upon a time (before the war), Bielefeld had one very large synagogue.  The organizing principle—to this day—in Germany is to have one “unified” Jewish community.  This is because support for the synagogues comes directly from the government.  When people are identified as Jews, 9% of their income tax goes to the Jewish community.  I think that it’s fair to say that there is a lot of competition for this money between Progressive (Reform), Masorti and “traditional” Jewish groups.  It creates a certain challenge for those trying to build the Jewish community and its institutions, because people don’t have any sense of obligation to support synagogues.

Bielefeld Synagogue

It is a challenge for whoever acquires the resources to organize a community.  The Jews from the FSU have very little, if any, Jewish background.  Distinction between Reform, Conservative and Orthodox doesn’t have much meaning for them.  They’ve got enough to cope with trying to adjust to life in a new country.

Our services on both Friday night and Shabbat morning were followed by light but delicious meals.  The Friday night attendance was probably negatively impacted by the fact that Germany was playing Greece in a European Cup (soccer) quarterfinal at 8 p.m.!  Which was doubly unfortunate, timing-wise, as this Shabbat was the last visit by rabbinical student Ulrike Offenberg.  Seems like she deserved a better Shabbat of appreciation!

Ulrike Offenberg

Back to that idea about the intersecting circles. . . Here I was in a synagogue that rang with the melodies of Lewandowski—the source of many of our best-known Jewish melodies—melodies that began more often than not as beautiful choral compositions written for and performed at the Oranienburgerstrasse Synagogue in Berlin, where I’ll be “soon enough.”  But the people who have lately learned these melodies in the Bielefeld synagogue aren’t the direct inheritors of those melodies.  Had they been able to practice Jewish religious life in “the old country,” they probably would NOT have been exposed to or sung the Lewandowski melodies, as the most Eastern European synagogue traditions had different practices or melodies by different composers.

These same melodies were once MY introduction to significant Jewish music—when I sang in the choir at Temple Emanu-El in Providence, Rhode Island, beginning in my junior year at Brown.  In fact, a high point for me emotionally and musically on this trip will be this COMING Friday night when we perform Lewandowski’s Tov L’hodot .  This (one of 7 or more by the composer) is the full-psalm setting that ends in the iconic Tzadik Katamar sung by so many Jews around the world.

I expressed my admiration and hope for the journey of the Jews of this community.  THESE people left after the break-up of the Soviet Union.  Two of my grandparents left the same part of the world BEFORE it was the Soviet Union!  But anyone who makes that journey to a new country with a new language deserves respect, appreciation and support.

The funniest moment of the services was probably at L’cha Dodi.  I figured that they would know one or another of the Lewandowski melodies quite well, and thought it was particularly an opportunity to share something “uniquely” American.  So I introduced Craig Taubman’s L’cha Dodi from Friday Night Live, saying that they might or might not like it—and to understand that the composer is someone who works for Walt Disney. . . They totally KNEW the setting already.

More circles – Ulrike knew Julie Edelman and Olli Broad.  This wasn’t surprising, but it was a nice circle, because I did Julie and Olli’s wedding the evening before we left on our trip.  Julie grew up in Columbus, but has lived for several years in Berlin, where she met Olli.  Among the guests at the wedding was a young man (Ben Tesser) who had made the Berlin-Bielefeld trip monthly last year or the year before.  But the most INTERESTING circle was when Ulrike asked me (since I was from Columbus, Ohio) whether I happened to know a young woman named Meredith Moss!  Of course the Mosses are among our closest friends in Columbus, and we’ve known Meredith since she was a girl—literally for the 30 years that we’ve lived in Columbus.  I will probably see Ulrike on Thursday night, and maybe we’ll try to call Meredith.

More circles – Since Irith is involved deeply with the Progressive Judaism folks, she of course knew Jonathan, from whose apartment I had come only Friday morning.

While in Bielefeld, I stayed in an old-fashioned hotel called Ravensburger Hof.  The room was a little small—especially since it had just a small bed—but it was all pleasant enough—with delicious breakfasts.

Said delicious breakfasts

On Shabbat afternoon, when I returned to my hotel, I started looking over some of the music that I’ll be singing during the coming week.  I am singing some choral pieces in a special program in Hannover on Wednesday, and have a solo in a Jewish choral work by Schubert(!) as well as a challenging solo work to refine.  Naturally, I got sleepy after a little while, so I lay down and had a nice Shabbes nap.  After that, I went for a walk around the area of the hotel.  It is situated in the Old Town area with lots of shops, cafes, etc.  I knew that there was a music recital at 6:15 p.m. in the big church, and figured that I could attend that.

I sat on a bench for about an hour, absorbing the scene, with people of all ages walking and wheeling their bicycles.  (Two things that are a bit different here from how I perceive back home: a lot more bicycle use, and people take their dogs out on trips – whether to the Old Town or on the train.)

Then I went off to the recital.  I had misread the sign.  I had THOUGHT it was an organ recital.  (I LOVE good organ music played well.)  But it turned out to be a combination brass ensemble and organ recital.  Imagine my surprise when I noticed that, toward the end of the program (CIRCLE ALERT) came a piece by Louis Lewandowski!  Psalm 100.  Consider THAT circle.  Here I was in a CHURCH in Bielefeld, and the music of this great Jewish composer was on the program!  Truth be told, I didn’t know the piece—probably wouldn’t have recognized it as Lewandowski.   So maybe if I HADN’T known, it wouldn’t have been one of my favorite pieces on the program. . . but it struck me as more modern and harmonically interesting than most of the other music.  (The program had a LOT of stuff from about 1650 to 1850.)

It was interesting trying to imagine how the text fit the words—as I imagine it was originally written for choir.  It ended in a fugue, which I assume was on the words Ki Tov Adonai L’Olam Chasdo, V’ad Dor Vador Emunato.  (For God is good forever in His graciousness.  And to the Nth generation is He faithful.)

I wondered whether anyone in the church knew who Louis Lewandowski was.  (He WAS a cousin of Felix Mendelssohn, by the way.)  I’m guessing that the director of the musical ensemble did.

Toward the end of Shabbat morning services, I introduced my setting for Yism’chu, after first having determined that they are familiar with, and sometimes sing, the  melody which is most common in our (and many) congregations—a melody that often sounds sad, sullen, funereal—depends on who is leading it; I try to give it a certain lightness appropriate to the text—Yism’chu b’malchutcha—REJOICE in God’s sovereignty.  I realized after singing my melody, which is in 6/8 and would be quite difficult to sing in a way that doesn’t indicate a bright-side emotion, that I had written it originally for a “guest appearance” at the synagogue at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem—which was essentially the same institution that created the Siddur that we were using.  (There were two editions of the Israeli Reform Siddur at the synagogue—one with German translation, but most with Russian translation.)  AND the person who hosted me when I wrote the piece, Eli Schleifer, now teaches at the Geiger College in Berlin.  Circles, circles, more circles.

I gave the synagogue a copy of our Tifereth Israel 100-year history, pointing out that, although we started out as the Hungarian congregation in Columbus, some of our key families came from an area that is part of Germany.  (I hope I was right about this—I was thinking of the Wasserstrom family.)  I also gave them one of the CDs from the Spirit Series of the Cantors Assembly USCJ.  They gave ME some lovely post cards of the congregation (better than the photos I took before Shabbat, I think) and a “taste of Bielefeld” collection of handmade chocolates (yay).